Piano players rarely get to meet one another unless there’s some sort of pre-arranged after-hours pub meeting arranged by the bass player, or maybe paths briefly crossing during a festival when the bands are changing venues – but I’m pretty sure it was the first of those situations that I first met Brian. In 1985 I seem to remember we somehow shared a residency at an hotel on Princes Street in Edinburgh, and as I lived in the city centre at the time, it was an easy stroll down to the hotel and that’s when I first heard him play. He was so good it wasn’t long before I realised there was no point in me staying in Scotland, and I might as well try my luck down south.
I didn’t see much of him from then on but I did get to hear recordings and broadcasts and whatever he turned his hands to, solo piano, his trio with Kenny Ellis and John Rae, the John Rae Collective, Tam White and the Dexters, playing with a myriad of visiting American soloists, he’d give it his all.
The palette of musical colours and the sheer range of styles he could draw from made him absolutely formidable. He must have played with thousands of artistes in the last forty years – and I’m afraid I missed the vast majority of it – but I do have a special memory of one particular performance. It was a duet with singer Fionna Duncan. I only heard one song and it was for me, the single-most moving rendition of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You”. Brian had that rare ability to get ‘inside’ a song and communicate his profound understanding of it to an audience.
The jazz scene has lost a gentle giant.
Brian Robert Kellock. Born Edinburgh, 28 December 1962. Died Edinburgh, 27 May 2025.
